A good start

 Well, what an auspicious start to the tour. Wonderful weather, an long ride through spectacular countryside, and everything went off without a hitch. Mostly....

We left the house right on time, at 6:30. It takes about 40 minutes to ride the 10 km from our house to to Central Station, and, in theory, we were supposed to be there an hour ahead of the train’s 8:15 departure have enough time to get the bikes into the baggage car. Yes, after numerous calls, we had been assured that there would be no problems bringing our bikes on the train after all. Alas, someone forgot to send the memo to the people at the ticket counter this morning. But I must say, despite the incredible confusion about the existential question of whether or not bikes were or were not allowed on this train, all of the Via staff were incredibly kind and accommodating. Ultimately, there was no problem and by 8:15, we and our bikes were on our way to Rivière a Pierre (or, as the conductor jokingly referred to it, Rivière a Peter—no arguments here!). 

At least on the stretch from Montreal to Rivière a Pierre, the train ride from Montreal to Jonquière is not particularly pretty. For the first hour it passes through Montreal industrial zones and rail yards. Then it’s mostly farm fields, trees, and the very occasionally view of a river gorge. And it is is very much a milk run. You can ask the conductor to get off basically anywhere. And people do! So there’s a lot of stopping and starting. We arrived at our destination just after 1 pm, about 40 minutes late (par for the course for Canadian trains and, according to the conductor, quite good time for this train, which often has to wait for freight trains to pass).

 

We got our bikes loaded, made a pit stop at the trail head (see what I did there?) and were on our way. The first day-and-a-half of this trip are on the Vélopiste Jacques-Cartier Portneuf, a lovely rail trail that runs through some very wild country. The trail bed itself is quite well maintained, especially for this early in the season, and its gentle ups and downs were quite doable, even carrying 30 kg of gear. We stopped three or four times to rest and eat and enjoy the scenery, finally pulling into the Station Touristique Duchesnay at about 5:30 and a total of about 64 km—quite a long day by our standards. But everything went relatively smoothly and mostly according to plan, and whatever frustration or stress we were feeling melted away as soon as we got on our bikes.